Lesson plan

Conversation Lesson - News

Topic
News

Aims
• To develop fluency through a range of speaking activities
• To introduce vocabulary related to news

Age group
Teens

Level
B1

Time
60-120 minutes

Materials
• Conversation Lesson – News student worksheet

Introduction
Where were you when you heard about... ? There are some news stories which leave nobody in
any difficulty when answering this question, so even allowing for sensitivity to certain subjects in a
classroom situation, there are already dozens of things most people can talk about.

But talking about news doesn’t have to mean talking about world news. It can mean making it,
inventing stories and reporting fictional events in local situations. In this conversation lesson I take
students through several stages which enable them to make conversation about the news from a
number of different perspectives.

Not everybody follows the news, so it pays therefore to keep an open mind, and have plenty of
activities which don’t require masses of detailed knowledge on everybody’s part in order to get off
the ground.

Just as a brief aside, I regularly use BBC Learning English materials and the Grammar Challenge
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series has recently published a lot of podcasts with a focus on news words. These could be a
useful extra for you and your students towards the top end of Intermediate and above.

Procedure
1. What’s in the • I try to avoid teacher-centredness, often failing but never going down without
news today? (5- a fight. In this case I am happy to begin the class with the group chatting
10 minutes)
casually with me. It has some value, and after all, conversation classes are
intended to put students more at ease with the spoken English language.
Asking them how their day has been and what they are planning to do after
class is an approach I often use for the first few minutes (I keep meaning to
think of more questions, yes)... in this lesson I ask them if they have seen the
news today, and we have a brief chat about stories hitting the headlines
either locally or globally.

• I don’t plan the stage, nor do I expect much from it, but despite it being
contrary to good teaching practice in many ways, I really do think it’s been the
best way to start this lesson.

• After five or ten minutes we have an idea of what’s happening in the world,
and the students are all on topic.

2. Task 2: • Appendix 1 gives a number of sentences which contain relevant lexical items
Vocabulary which may or may not be new to the class. What I offer here is a basic
(10-15 minutes) selection, but I have used more or different words a number of times.

• The task is simple although you may want to modify the sentences to clarify
the context in each case, students are expected to read the sentences and
identify the meaning of the words in bold without any help from dictionaries or
translators. Obviously this happens as part of a conversation about each
situation and as I monitor I encourage students to develop the conversation a
little when they are happy that they understand the relevant language. I might
ask them to talk about the news of the moment and comment whether it be
sensationalised etc.

• When this has done its course, typically ten minutes later, we come back
together to share our understandings of the new words. You can do this as a
pyramid discussion if you like, but I recognise that although this is a priority
stage (identifying vocabulary useful to the lesson), prolonging the
conversation is not hugely beneficial.
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• As I write the words on the board, I invite students to give examples, or to talk
about the last time ... etc, or maybe even to invent a human interest story, for
example. I’m checking their understanding, but without asking them to repeat
what they’ve already said.

• Then I add more words, it pays to have some prepared, mental blocks strike
no more so than when at the board, one time I couldn’t think of a single news
word and it left me very red-faced. Luckily I was helped by a strong class who
between them provided a good 20 extra items or so. Sharing our knowledge
was a good way for them to explore the topic further, and on this occasion for
me to prove I did know something about the presenting topic.

3. Task 3: • Simple stage, and very effective, maximising speaking without the onus being
Discussion on students to provide the initiative (they will do that very much in later
questions (10-
stages), I give them some questions and invite them to avoid simple and
15 minutes)
short answers.

In pairs, make conversation about your answers to these questions:

• What do you think the main purpose of television news is? To

inform, entertain or influence?
• Do you think people generally take the news at face value?
• What are some of the differences between television news and
the news in the newspapers?
• What makes a good news story, in your opinion. For example,
celebrities and their cars, a general election, the discovery of a
cure for a bad disease etc
• Have you ever been at the location of a big news story? Were the
television reports true? If not, what does this make you think
about the reliability of television news?

• To be honest, in this case I do more often than not put pairs with other pairs
after ten minutes, not to do it all again but to investigate A, what their views
have in common and B, what is different. Then I ask them to report to the
class, briefly, what they think. If time permits I ask them if anything surprised
them about what their partner said, or if they learned anything.

• It can be an interesting ten to fifteen minute stage, but I wouldn’t want it to

last much longer, this approach has its value but is not the best way to exploit
classroom time, and there’s plenty more to do.

4. Task 4: Three I ask students to think of three news stories from their lifetime. One from the
news stories current month, one from the year and one from any period. Then, simply, I
stand them up and have them investigate what other members of the class
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remember. I write a few questions on the board to prepare in their minds the
information they should have ready to give, for example:

• What news story have you chosen?

• When did it happen?

• What happened?

• Where were you when you heard the news?

• How did you find out?

• Admittedly this is another fairly random activity and can be a bit hit and miss,
but the saving graces are essentially that you can either skip it or cut it short.
Again, it seems to be a ten minute job, but in that you may need to keep
closely to time this might not be a wholly reliable activity. I’m happy to go with
the flow, and I join the conversation, encouraging students to develop their
questions and answers beyond the original ideas.

• But there is method in my methodology (although not so much ology) and

with the last question am I rather cunningly leading into the next stage which
sees and end to the chat based activities and takes us into the business end
of the lesson.

5. Task 5: Types • Students have by now told each other, and me, how they heard the news.
of media (15 Bringing us back together momentarily I use their answers to make a list on
minutes)
the board which generally takes the form of a list of headings, TV, Radio,
Newspapers, Internet. (I sometimes teach them about the old town criers in
England, but don’t worry yourself about that.)

• Then in pairs students must discuss and write lists for each media, in each
case identifying the advantages and disadvantages of each. This can take
two minutes or twenty minutes depending on how thoroughly it is done, but as
I am keen to keep this going for at least 15 I make sure students discuss
each point in detail.

• Often I give one media to each group, and assign members to report their
findings to other groups upon which they will also gain that groups insight too.
It varies according to group size and other matters of classroom
management. What doesn’t vary is that I expect full involvement for the
duration.

• A group discussion touches on their findings and I may agree or disagree,

and say so. Students are reminded to be critical and alert, respectfully, and
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where one group thinks the Internet is more accessible, another group with
only a PC at home might argue that the radio is better when on the move. I’d
ask why they couldn’t buy a newspaper for that purpose, and no doubt they’d
tell me they are only published once a day so not useful for hourly updates.
We could talk all night.

6. Task 6: • Appendix 2 includes a series of events (or non-events) which have happened
Broadcasting today. The upcoming bulletin is long enough to announce and describe only
order
six of these events. The students’ job is to decide which of them to broadcast,
and equally importantly, the order they should be broadcast in.

• I introduce it by asking what types of stories they see on the news, and what
types they usually don’t. It goes from here quite nicely into the activity and
when I give the instructions and lists out, it seems to get moving quickly
enough. There’s really little else to add, I find it a fun stage and provided
students give reasons and aim to agree with each other it can last for up to
twenty minutes. I aim for twelve, roughly, and use three or so to compare our
findings. Invariably the Presidential story comes first or maybe second. I ask
why in spite of it being obvious, but where students want to inform the nation
that a local boy has bought a new bike, I feel blessed for the opportunity to
introduce the word newsworthy, and point out to them that it isn’t. They are
usually joking J.

7. Task 7: • I’m not including materials for this in the appendices simply because the
What’s the availability of alternatives means most teachers would probably prefer to
Story? (15
locate their own news stories. It’s otherwise the same, simply get hold of a
minutes)
news story, written, and identify about ten keywords from the text. They
should be significant words, prepositions absolutely not; verbs, nouns,
adjectives yes, but without being too obvious students should be able to think
through the list and get an idea of the story.

• I usually dictate them, and then ask pairs to piece them together and discuss
what the story was. They can move round the class and share, compare or
simply poach ideas provided they have given it a fair chance and done their
best to tell the story.

• I join in but of course knowing the story my contribution has to be limited to

questions and hints, but the point of this activity is not to guess a news story,
it is to improve our speaking, so it matters not if they are horribly wrong.
Stress this to them, when you give them the story it can be discouraging to
have been wrong but this is not the way they should feel, tell them that the
task now is to discuss the differences between the two, theirs and the real
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one, and then to discuss the story in general.

• I invite them to share and compare again, this time formally, organising them
into fours. I keep them in fours for the next activity.

Task 8: What’s • Again, I dictate a list of words in the same style as the first list, only this time
the story? they did not come from a news story but from my imagination. The news story
(version 2) (15-
is to follow, and in their fours students work together to create a gripping and
20 minutes)
informative story (written maybe, it’s not the objective, but they have to
present it so have to remember it) which they will read to the class.

• They have to include the words but neither order nor part of speech are
important, they can change to verbs, nouns etc and it is not important if they
repeat the words (other than of course I actively discourage repetition
generally).

• I suppose this opens cans of journalistic worms and we could introduce into
the lesson discussion about what makes a good news story. Yet however
tempting it may be I don’t do anything like that, I think it would be a distraction
and again, I’m not training journalists, I’m helping speaking skills develop.

• When they have prepared their good news stories, they read them to the
class, if possible as a TV reporter would. If they can finish with Name,
location and it’s back to the studio, even better.

Task 9: • I take in a range of headlines and ask students to discuss the content of the
Headlines (10 stories. Yes, I talk a little about headlines, how articles are omitted, past
minutes)
tenses are avoided and the future is expressed by the infinitive, but not in any
great detail. And in some ways I don’t feel that I want to give them the
articles to read because we’ve already done this in Stage 6, and it’s not a
reading lesson after all. I just want them to talk, usually this is the last activity
and free discussion with the level of fluency they have by now reached is not
appropriately concluded by reading the newspaper. They could come back to
that in the next lesson depending on the objectives of your course. For now,
they can talk about Barry Manilow being seen in Harrods', or The British
General Election, depending on how they interpret the headline.

• Of course, I am sure to feed back to them and this may involve them seeing
part or all of the article, but at this stage I am happy to settle for a basic idea,
and put the focus on our speaking

Contributed by
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Chris Trickett